Bhikkhus, if you develop and make much this one thing, it invariably leads to weariness, cessation, appeasement, realization and extinction. What is it? It is recollecting the Enlightened One. If this single thing is recollected and made much, it invariably leads to weariness, cessation, appeasement, realization and extinction.Anguttara-Nikaya: Ekanipata: Ekadhammapali: PañhamavaggaBuddhanussatiSCVSMVMMBS

This is a true story...my friends' daughter was in love with a man who joined a cult in Kansas. One day that man showed up with a priest(Christian) and a big SUV waiting outside the house, my friends called a police. But the daughter was 22 yrs old, she had the right to choose to go with her boyfriend, the police couldn't force her not to go. She left that day, my friends were so sad. The wife came to talk/cry to me for a while then her husband came to take her back home.

6 months later, my friend told me that cult man refused to marry her daughter and she was broken-hearted but still lived in that cult-church. My friends drove to Kansas to visit her wishing to bring her back home, they were shocked to see her smoked marijuana and got high, still refused to come home. Up to now(more than 2 years) she's still living with the cult, working in a fastfood place to pay for room/board.

Hard to believe that this pretty girl with BA in Art, a daughter of a professor with a big beautiful brick house next to mine, chose to live in a small room with the cult people!!!

Hard to believe that this pretty girl with BA in Art, a daughter of a professor with a big beautiful brick house next to mine, chose to live in a small room with the cult people!!!

Well that's what some atheists also think...how could some people with high levels of qualification and aptitude would ever want to have anything to do with religion...unthinkable to them...

Yes, I too have some family members involved in less harmful folk religious cults but I guess in the end analysis, I am responsible for my own thought, word & deed at the end of the day...even when finished with blaming all other nine directions of the compass except my own direction...

From the video, it reminds me of a grim reality...even for us who are in the Buddha Dhamma, until one is an Ariya, as the Buddha taught..In the same way, there is the case where some worthless men study the Dhamma... Having studied the Dhamma, they don't ascertain the meaning of those Dhammas with their discernment. Not having ascertained the meaning of those Dhammas with their discernment, they don't come to an agreement through pondering. They study the Dhamma both for attacking others and for defending themselves in debate. They don't reach the goal for which [people] study the Dhamma. Their wrong grasp of those Dhammas will lead to their long-term harm & suffering. Why is that? Because of the wrong-graspedness of the Dhammas.

Bhikkhus, if you develop and make much this one thing, it invariably leads to weariness, cessation, appeasement, realization and extinction. What is it? It is recollecting the Enlightened One. If this single thing is recollected and made much, it invariably leads to weariness, cessation, appeasement, realization and extinction.Anguttara-Nikaya: Ekanipata: Ekadhammapali: PañhamavaggaBuddhanussatiSCVSMVMMBS

Tonight I went out to walk meditation and my neighbor came to talk to me about her daughter again. But this time she was happier because her daughter got a new job as a guard at an Art Museum in Kansas close to the cult-church. And my friends bought the daughter a new car so she could drive to work. They told me that the daughter refused to come back home because she didn't want pity from neighbors who knew her so well since she was young.